A young woman goes to work for an animal researcher dealing with primates and is soon held hostage by the hairy subjects.

A soft warning against how man deals with animals, and how ignoring their awareness can sometimes have bad results. I was on the side of the monkeys, of course. You decide to kill an animal because you’re finished with him, I have no sympathy if he kills you instead. These animals have higher IQ’s than many retarded people, treating them as mindless is morally repugnant.

The warning is a little soft, though. Clearly the main goal of the movie was to let the primates steal the show as often as possible, and Link usually does. The true weakness of the movie is they make us marvel at the monkeys and how smart and cute they are, then expect us to be afraid of them. It pulls it off, but not as well as it could have if there’d been a little more focus.

The film is a little slow at times, and has some holes in it that someone probably should have thought of while filming. All in all it’s a decent flick, though. Slightly Hitchcockesque at times, and has some brief nudity from the gorgeous Elisabeth Shue, which is always a plus.

6 out of 10 well-dressed orangutans